Two proposals rated Exceptional. Two past performance ratings of Substantial Confidence. A price gap of nearly $15 million between the two offerors. On that record, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) did what source selection authorities routinely do. It declared the offerors essentially equal on the non-price factors and awarded to the lower-priced firm. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) sustained the disappointed offeror’s protest, because the past performance findings that made the two firms look equivalent could not bear the weight the agency placed on them. The case is Veros Real Estate Solutions, LLC, B-423965.2, B-423965.3, B-423965.4 (Comp. Gen. July 22, 2026), and it carries an outsize practical lesson: An agency may not credit an offeror with work the offeror did not perform, and it may not paper over a relevancy determination with conclusory adjectives. For contractors competing in best value procurements where technical ratings bunch at the top, the holding warrants close study.

AT A GLANCE

• An agency cannot credit an offeror for work the offeror did not perform. Here, GAO found that the VA improperly credited the awardee for records management and related work actually performed by government personnel.
• Past performance relevancy cannot rest on conclusory labels. An agency must explain how the work it cites corresponds to the requirements of the solicitation. That matters especially where past performance is one of the factors used to declare competing proposals essentially equal.
• A protester need not prove that an awardee was unqualified. It may be enough to show that the agency’s stated basis for treating the proposals as equivalent was unreasonable or inadequately documented. Where that equivalence drives a price-based award, the omission can determine the outcome.
• The rest of the decision matters, too. Contractors should quantify capabilities where possible, build disparate treatment arguments around substantively indistinguishable proposal features, and keep representations consistent across GAO and Small Business Administration (SBA) proceedings.

THE PROCUREMENT

The VA issued a solicitation for automated appraisal management services as a small business set-aside under Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Parts 12 and 15, with three evaluation factors. Technical was more important than past performance, and the two non-price factors combined were significantly more important than price. Both firms received Exceptional under the technical factor and Substantial Confidence under past performance. The protester proposed $31,659,908. The awardee’s evaluated price, which reflected the 10% evaluation discount the solicitation afforded a qualifying service-disabled veteran-owned small business, was $16,891,410. The VA concluded the proposals were essentially equal in technical merit and that, where technical merit and past performance are equal, price became the primary consideration.

That reasoning is unremarkable as far as it goes. Its vulnerability was that it rested entirely on the premise of equivalence. Knock out the support for one side of the equation and the trade-off collapses. How the protester got here matters. The VA first made award to the same firm in September 2025. The protester challenged it, the agency took corrective action, and GAO dismissed that protest as academic. The VA then reevaluated and selected the same awardee again. Contractors that assume corrective action ends the matter should study that sequence, because the second round is where this protester won.

THE SUSTAINED GROUND: RELEVANCY CANNOT BE ASSUMED

GAO sustained the protest on the VA’s relevancy assessment of the awardee’s past performance, finding the evaluation both unreasonable and insufficiently documented.

The VA reviewed four Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) reports for the awardee. The most serious problem concerned a contract the awardee performed for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In assessing relevancy, the agency credited the awardee with records management services and related work. GAO found those functions were in fact duties and responsibilities of the HHS program office rather than work the awardee itself performed. An offeror cannot receive relevancy credit for work performed by government personnel, and an evaluation that does so is not reasonable.

The remaining three CPARS reports failed for a different reason. The VA’s relevancy determinations were conclusory, and the record did not explain how the work described corresponded to the requirements of the performance work statement. FAR 15.305(a)(2)(i) directs that the currency and relevance of past performance information, the source of the information, the context of the data, and general trends in the contractor’s performance shall be considered. GAO will not substitute its judgment for the agency’s on relevancy. It will examine whether the evaluation was reasonable, consistent with the solicitation’s stated criteria, and adequately documented, and that last requirement is where this evaluation came apart. The contemporaneous record contained no analysis connecting the cited work to the solicited requirements. Where past performance was one of only two non-price factors and the tradeoff turned on the offerors being indistinguishable, that omission was not harmless.

Note what the sustained ground did not require. GAO never had to find the awardee unqualified. It had only to find the agency’s stated basis for equivalence unsupported. That is a materially lower bar, and it is the bar most often within reach when a procurement is decided on price after the non-price factors are called a wash.

THE DENIED GROUNDS ARE EQUALLY INSTRUCTIVE

The protester lost on three additional theories, and each loss is instructive. First, it argued disparate treatment because the VA considered four CPARS reports for the awardee but only two for it. GAO rejected the argument, observing that nothing in the terms of the request for proposal limited the agency’s past performance evaluation to an equal number of CPARS reports per offeror. Disparate treatment requires that an agency treat substantively indistinguishable proposal features unequally. It does not require arithmetic symmetry in the volume of information reviewed.

Second, the protester challenged the technical evaluation, contending the awardee received unwarranted strengths for its automated valuation model and appraisal scoring experience. GAO denied the ground because the differing results were reasonably based on differences in the proposals. The awardee earned credit for offering a product serving 16 of the top 20 mortgage lenders, while the protester’s proposal did not supply comparable quantification of top national lenders served. The lesson is one every proposal manager should internalize. Evaluators credit what is on the page, and GAO will not rescue after the fact a capability the offeror possesses but never quantified.

Third, and most interesting jurisdictionally, the protester alleged that the awardee’s proposal materially misrepresented the involvement of a proposed subcontractor, pointing to inconsistencies between the proposal and statements the awardee later made in an Small Business Administration size proceeding. A material misrepresentation claim at GAO turns on a false statement of material fact in the proposal on which the agency relied. GAO denied the ground, reasoning that it is the proposal that must control, and that any contrary post-proposal statements to SBA are issues within the purview of SBA. GAO polices representations made to the procuring agency in the proposal; inconsistent representations made afterward in a size or status proceeding belong to SBA. A protester that believes an awardee has told two different stories should be prepared to litigate on two tracks, because neither forum will do the other’s work.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR CONTRACTORS

1. A contractor cannot receive credit for work performed  by government personnel, by a predecessor contractor, or by an affiliate outside the proposed team. CPARS narratives often describe an entire program rather than the contractor’s slice of it, and evaluators tend to read them at the program level. That gap is where this protest was won.

2. Attack the past performance documentation, not only the judgment. A protester need not prove the awardee was unqualified. It must show that the agency never wrote down why the cited work was relevant to this performance work statement. “Reasonable, consistent, and adequately documented” are three separate requirements, and the third is the one agencies most often fail. Frame debriefing questions to expose whether any relevancy analysis exists, because the answer shapes whether a protest is worth filing.

3. Where possible and advantageous, quantify every capability in your proposal. The awardee prevailed on the technical disparate treatment ground because it put a number on its market penetration and its competitor did not.

4. Remember that disparate treatment arguments must be built around substantively indistinguishable proposal features that drew different results.

5. Keep CPARS entries current, correct inaccurate narratives while the record is open, and select references that map to the performance work statement requirement by requirement rather than by customer name recognition.

6. Sequence GAO and SBA challenges deliberately, and keep your own submissions consistent. GAO addresses misrepresentations made to the procuring agency in the proposal; representations made later to SBA in a size or status proceeding are SBA’s to police. Plan for both forums from the outset rather than discovering the divide mid-protest. The mirror-image lesson for awardees matters just as much: A proposal and a later SBA submission that describe subcontractor involvement differently create exposure in the forum you were not watching.